where to buy filamant cash and carry?

Is there a place in your area that you can walk into, look at filament, buy, go home and print? Is everything mail order only, or are there walk in filament marts?

If not, should there be?

It's getting close. Places like Staples and Home depot sell it but it's currently ship to you or to store. I would imagine that if they start selling a lot then they would make it available in stores. I don't think there is a market for it just yet. Take Home depot as an example, they have 2,200 stores in the U.S. alone. If each of them stocked 20 rolls of 6 different colors ea. that means they would have to invest in 264,000 rolls. If they instead ship them then they might only need to stock 200 rolls in one or two key locations across the country.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/27/2015 10:00PM by tmorris9.

If the B&M locations that are starting to sell printers have success, it will start to make sense for them to also stock in the stores a limited range of the most common filaments for those machines as the user base expands.

I live 80 miles east of Salt Lake City and get my filament from Zenikinetic. A cool little shop that produces printers, scans people or whatever for $20.00 and sells rolls. I go down there about twice a month to pick up flooring and supplies. They produce their own filament on site. Yesterday I traded three used rolls of 3mm for one new 1.75mm. Cool guys. I guess I'm lucky.

Micro Center stores across the USA carry spools of filament from a few different manufacturers, including their own store brand that often is on sale for $15.99/spool. Their nearest store is about an hour's drive from me, but I have driven down there in the past to stock up on "one of everything" when they had a sale.....

Frys also carries it, at least the one closes to me does. Haven't used any yet so can't comment on the quality.

I would imagine most major meto areas would have a few places (large electronics stores like Frys or specialty stores), but I would think outside of those areas, your only hope is a one off, hobby shop or a mom & pops 3D printing specialty store.

Sorry, but 3D printing is a big enough market for Wal-Mart or Office Depot to have any selection on the self. Keep in mind that shelf space in a retail store is NOT free and is funded by the suppliers. Why would you do that when at this point, 95% of all filament sales are online?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/04/2015 12:49PM by dclarkm.

I disagree.

Microcenter in Queens has a decent turn around rate for their filament. Its close to my house and I go there almost every week. I usually pick up a kilo every time I go. Its cheap, its high quality and its convenient. The filament section is ever evolving. I would say they probably sell about 5-10 killos a day. Decent turn over for a 6x6 foot shelf with every type of filament out there. I am going to pick up some petg this weekend as well as a roll of red ABS. I can't comment on the quality of the pla, but their ABS is top notch.

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Modicum V1 sold on e-bay user jaguarking11

Here in the UK it's possible to buy a few types of filament in retail stores, but the prices and variety are much better on eBay.

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In my hometown and in my country there are many shops like that. The Netherlands is quite fast with these kind of things, however, selling and designing good printers is something we Dutch are not good at.

Except for Ultimaker. Dutch brand, great printers Don't own one, but am pretty much blown away by what I've seen.

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